As Crows Fly
by Cloverfield
Summary: Setsuna. Teenage girl. Swordswoman. Crow demon. Konoka POV.


**DISCLAIMER**: Negima is not mine. If it were, there would be a student exchange plan featuring the girls of Ichigo-sha...

**PREFACE: **An observation of a character, from the point of view of one who loves her.

Not meant to be taken truly seriously. Possibly AU due to artistic licence.

**RANDOM NOTE:** AU is the chemical symbol for gold. Hee. I just noticed that.

* * *

**As Crows Fly.**

* * *

I asked her to tell me how it felt to fly, once. 

She couldn't.

She tried; her mouth opened and closed, and words fell from her lips, but she and I both knew it made no sense.

In a moment of frustration, she asked me what it felt like to use magic- real magic, not paper dolls.

I understood then.

* * *

Her fingers are calloused, made rough by the hours of the sword. 

They catch on my skin sometimes, scratch against me; much like the way her gaze does, those few times she has ever allowed it to linger upon me.

There is hunger there; hunger that claws my clothes to my feet with a look, hunger that bares me to her, makes me shiver, lets me know that she is shy and sweet and oh so hesitant- but something in her is wild and untamed and has absolutely no doubts about wanting me whatsoever.

It's enough to make me feel weak.

Her fingers are warm and slender, and cup my cheek. Her eyes are dark, and very readable; I can see desire written there, in love's own ink.

I can see a lot of things in her eyes, but only when she lets me.

* * *

Her wings are still there, even hidden beneath skin and cloth and magic that tastes of warm, feathery air. 

If I run my hand down her smooth back, my fingers try to tell me of feathers before my eyes correct them.

_This is only a girl's back_, they say, _Not wings. Smooth, muscled and warm to the touch. Not feathers._

Even her hair, threaded through my fingers, whispers of soft down before common-sense kicks in.

When she lets it down, it flutters in the wind- even when the air is still, and the day calm.

Eva would say this is chi, youki, her inner nature trying to assert over her outer self, a side effect of living so long in human form.

I don't know what it is, even if her hair reminds me of crow feathers, but to me, it's beautiful.

_

* * *

Winged Warrior,_ says Negi's card. It's in latin, so he had to translate it for me, but that's the gist of what it said. 

_Winged Warrior_.

My card says something different, which it shouldn't, because essentially we performed the same pactio, with the same person.

Even Chamo said it should be the same card, summon the same weapon-

-_"Adeat," she whispers, and a sword shimmers into her hands, wings bursting from her back in a flurry of feathers and startlingly bright light. Her eyes are hard like steel-_

Oh, she still gets a sword. Without one, she isn't Setsuna.

But her sword, with me, her sword is always bare steel. Never sheathed- her wings spread, never folded.

Her eyes open, never closed.

The description, which I am told is a summary of the ministel's nature, is simpler, too.

_Herself, Untamed._

When I think about what it could mean, I can't help but shiver.

* * *

When I look back on how we were, I have to admit, I pity her. 

How she was then. Not now.

_Those days, I clutched my duty to me, cradled it in my hands, pressed it flat against my heart, to save the rips and burst seams that threatened with every hurt, aching look you gave me, until it was nothing but tatters, my lady; tatters and torn and so pathetic I dared not use it to still the beating of my heart, as once it did._

_I hoped for nothing; not your friendship, not your regard. Nothing._

_I wanted it, needed it, _ached_ for it- but did not hope, for what hope could, as I was then, have against who I _thought_ I was?_

It was so much clearer for me. She was my friend, and I loved her because of it.

Later, I was her friend –no matter how little I could speak to her, no matter how she would turn away with what I saw as cool disdain, but was instead a heart that beat madly against a cage of utter self-restraint- because I loved her.

I have to wonder, sometimes, how she could have seen it any differently.

* * *

A kiss is never just a kiss. The pactio taught us all that; taught us that a press of lips to lips can, in the right circumstance, be far more powerful than any of us would have believed. 

We were all young girls, after all, even if some of us looked to be more like young women; we gave kisses away like candy, chaste brushes against the mouths of boys who gave us sweets, flirted, told us we were pretty and laughed as we giggled.

My first kiss was not hers, not even Negi's; my first kiss was a temple boy, who came to change the incense at his little shrine.

He told me he'd always wanted to kiss a princess, and his lips grazed mine, shy as they were warm.

I was eight, and didn't understand he did it more for luck than anything else; the touch of someone of my bloodline was said to be fortune-bestowing, after all.

She told me later she hadn't wanted to kiss Negi, not really; I would've thought she was trying to justify it to me, but for the sadness in her eyes.

Kisses were never meant to seal contracts.

I joked then she would've preferred a handshake, and she blushed as red as her tie, stammering that "it had to be done!".

I asked her if she would've liked a handshake for ours, in jest, and she surprised me with her serious reply.

_It was never a contract, my lady. It just _was. _Like this._

She leant forward, and for a few moments, I forgot to breathe.

* * *

Reviews always appreciated!

:nudges reader towards blue button:


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